


smoke under the ceiling

by Crowned_Ladybug



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Minor Blood/Injury, Mute Gordon Freeman, Unresolved Romantic Tension, some bullshitting of combine/cp stuff bc who even Knows, tribute to me enjoying the fuck out of being bad at driving the Mudskipper, unresolved Everything really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29629587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowned_Ladybug/pseuds/Crowned_Ladybug
Summary: He doesn’t get jumped on his way to where he’d last seen the remaining Combine, so he takes that to mean one of two things – either they’re one leg in the grave already and can’tdomuch anymore, or they’re planning something. It fucking stings still to know that he’s hoping for theformer.He steps around the final bits of crates and the collapsed segment of the roof, and-The Combine is sitting with their back propped against the wall, staring right at him, and something about it sends Gordon’s stomach plummeting.---Gordon's worries come true, Barney has a change of plans, and neither of them know a thing about fashion.
Relationships: Barney Calhoun & Gordon Freeman, Barney Calhoun/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 9
Kudos: 61





	smoke under the ceiling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bee_bro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_bro/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Dima! Here, have a pakige of Gay People as a Gift and also as my token of appreciation for being my friend who says cool gay things and plays this ridiculous bug-dad-simulator series with me <3
> 
>  _Canon, what canon?_ philosophy also extended to this not at All being in line with the actual Mudskipper portion of the map so Please don't try to figure out where they are. It's fine. I promise.
> 
> Also I fuckin misinterpreted or misremembered the hl2 cp model before looking up the hla one, which is why in this instead of a comically small bulletproof vest it's what I wrote, and when I told Dima about it they wouldn't let me change it and they didn't even know how much this fic was made to bend to their will.
> 
> (I listened to [Motorcade (So Long, So Long)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX7qUAeqH64) by Thriving Ivory a lot between writing the second half of this so I'm just gonna leave that here as recommended listening.)

Gordon is in a firefight. Again. It’s not exactly unusual for him nowadays. Opposite of unusual, really.

Doesn’t mean he fucking _enjoys_ it though.

He got ambushed in some...hangar? Small warehouse? Boat house? Something or other that he’d checked into for loot and then instead got all _this_. To be fair that _does_ include loot, but it also includes shooting other people for that loot, so he’d really rather just not, you know?

He swears, if they take his nice hovercraft boat thingy while he’s busy in here trying not to get shot, he’s going to be so disappointed. Driving that thing around is the most fun he’s had in a week. Maybe more. But definitely since the Resonance Cascade, if he must think about it.

(It’s been two decades since then. No it hasn’t.

He’s dealing with it.)

He ducks into the flimsy cover of some crates that definitely smell of rotten wood, as a lucky shot pings off his armour somewhere. It’s already getting dented and he feels bad. It had been so nice of Kleiner and Alyx to paint it orange like the old one.

More Combine. More shooting. They hiss their distorted gibberish at each other and then one of them yells “oh, shi-” as Gordon catches them with a shot and they don’t get back up.

If he stopped to think about the why (they’re dead, they’re dead, they’re dead, so many dead, so much blood, so many _lives_ ) every time he hears their death signal go off, he would be here all day. Or wouldn’t. Wouldn’t be here _at all_ because he would’ve been taken down long ago while he’s too busy trying to process the blood on his hands.

So shooting it is. Shutting up his mind and shooting.

There’s less and less – five becomes three, becomes two-

Becomes one when Gordon catches glimpse of something red out of the corner of his eye and, grateful once again that twenty years have done nothing to change humanity’s mind about painting every tank of propane red, shoots for the well-placed explosive. The remaining two Combine jump in opposite directions to escape the blast, but the long beep from behind some knocked-down machinery adds another line to the tally.

Only one left, then, and it doesn’t sound like reinforcements are coming just yet.

Gordon swings his...well, his some-sort-of-gun onto his back by the strap. The kind of gun that’s big and shoots a lot of bullets really fast and really loudly. He has no clue what it’s called, what _any_ of his weapons are called, and he’s yet to be told by anyone.

It’s not like he ever had an interest in guns before this. His interest _now_ still only consists of using them to not die by making other things die before him.

(Scavenging for ammo sure has been a never-ending ordeal of trial and error.)

So he exchanges the big loud fast gun for his pistol, because yes, he knows what a _pistol_ is, thank you very much, and creeps out from behind his crate. Pistol aimed and ready, methodically stepping around obstacles, eyes and ears sharp for the last of this squad to take down, and for whatever reinforcements may be coming.

He doesn’t get jumped on his way to where he’d last seen the remaining Combine, so he takes that to mean one of two things – either they’re one leg in the grave already and can’t _do_ much anymore, or they’re planning something. It fucking stings still to know that he’s hoping for the _former_.

He steps around the final bits of crates and the collapsed segment of the roof, and-

The Combine is sitting with their back propped against the wall, staring right at him, and something about it sends Gordon’s stomach plummeting.

Now, making it through combat like he has way too many fucking times means taking in and interpreting as much information as you possibly can at all times. And, as always, there’s so many details, all rushing through Gordon’s head at once and battling for priority that could save or take his life.

The Combine is staring up at him, unmoving. There’s a small patch of blood on their side, seeping through the uniform, most likely from a bullet that had grazed them, most _certainly_ not enough of an injury to take them down. Their gun is lying on the ground beside them, and they’re not touching it, and maybe that’s what should be taking up most of Gordon’s attention, because it means they’re unarmed, helpless, he should _shoot_ -

But instead what battles itself to the forefront of his mind is this:

Their completely frozen posture. The intense gaze he cannot see but still _feel_ _s_ , by that human instinct that makes you feel like you’re being watched and is sometimes _right_ , through the soulless, black-tinted eyes of the gas mask. Their chest, rising and falling rapidly and heavily beneath the padded uniform, and the rhythm feels wrong for one of physical exertion.

Gordon has fought many of these guys by now, cornered a few, observed far, _far_ more. He’s never seen a single one of them act in a way that feels human.

He’s never seen a single one of them act _scared_.

They stare each other down for a long moment. Gordon’s finger is still on the trigger, and he knows he should shoot already. He knows that it doesn’t matter if this one still knows how to act human. He’s learned to not think about what’s under their masks, because they’re human faces, even if worn by human monsters, and if he went around thinking about that, if he went around _wondering_ , his aim wouldn’t be true anymore.

As harsh as it is, it’s either him or a whole bunch of fascist cops, and he’s never been one to go down without a fight.

The Combine moves before he could make up his mind, and he watches, frozen, and somehow, despite it all, _curious_. It’s always been his biggest strength and his biggest flaw. That curiosity that got him learning and discovering and burning his hands because he wanted to _know_.

The Combine raises both their hands, slow, careful, like they’re dealing with a wild animal, like they’re dealing with someone who might shoot them at any sudden movement, which, to be fair, is accurate. But Gordon doesn’t shoot, and their hands keep rising, and he goes from wondering if they’re reaching for something hidden in their uniform, a weapon or an SOS signal or a fucking _bomb_ for all he knows, to wondering if it’s really what it looks like. Surrender. A request for mercy.

(It is, in a way.)

But their hands don’t keep rising above their head and instead go to the sides of it, to the edges of the mask, and Gordon’s hand shakes so bad for a moment that he makes the probably foolish decision to remove his finger from the trigger. Lest he’d shoot when he doesn’t mean to yet. His aim had dropped from the Combine’s head to somewhere around their shoulder now.

Mind locked looking for an attack or a surrender, Gordon only realises what’s about to happen when it’s already happening, and the Combine pulls their mask away from their face.

For the second time, since Gordon had woken up in the future.

The sound of the pistol clattering on the ground is loud in the silence, but Gordon barely hears it, because staring up at him from the ground with wide, terrified eyes is _Barney_.

Gordon lands on his knees, hard, and the lack of kneepads on the HEV suit really isn’t doing him any favours, but for once he doesn’t feel it. Doesn’t feel anything besides the horrible, disorienting rush of feelings churning like acid in his chest.

Before he knows it he’s tilting forward and grabbing Barney by the shoulders of his uniform and yanking him into a kiss.

It catches up to him a second later and he’d be pulling back and apologising and never looking Barney in the eye ever again if it wasn’t for the fact that Barney is already kissing him back with equal force, hands in his hair, pulling him closer, and who’s Gordon to ever deny him. Who’s Gordon to ever want to let this moment go.

Kneeling on the ground like this is uncomfortable and his thighs fucking _hurt_ and he’s all too aware of where his gloves have been, but he doesn’t want to think about that. Doesn’t want to think about anything but _this_. Feeling alive and warm in a way that doesn’t mean he’s dying, and that he’s never been kissed like this before and he’s not even sure what he _means_ by that, and the little gasps of breath when they must before he leans back in and Barney meets him halfway and _hums_ and Gordon feels like he could melt.

But Gordon has never been good at shutting his brain off when it’s not doing that on its own, and not thinking about one thing typically means thinking about another.

Ever since he’d left Kleiner’s lab, he’d been worrying. About Kleiner, well-hidden but defenceless if he were to be found. About Alyx, who he still can’t believe is an adult now and still wants to tuck under his arm like she’s a little girl. About Eli, wherever that Black Mesa East of his is, about how hidden and defensible it may be.

About Barney, who’s undercover as a fascist cop when back in the day he used to tell Gordon that when he’d started as a security guard even the blue shirt and the service weapon used to put a bad taste in his mouth. He’d say that they should never expect a guy like him (trans and queer and knows how to start a car without keys) to pull on the skin of a cop, but the repairman work of the security guards suited him just fine.

And now…

Gordon had seen just how easily the Combine had thrown squad after squad of their Civil Protection officers into direct fire. As many as it takes to kill the One Free Man, and apparently not enough just yet.

Not thinking about what was under each of their masks meant he wouldn’t wonder if one of them would be familiar.

And then that fear had come true, hadn’t it? They sent Barney after him with a gun and a squad of cops wearing the same hide. To kill him. And Gordon had killed them in turn. Almost killed all of them.

He had pointed a gun at his best friend and wouldn’t have thought twice about it had he taken the shot.

And then...then what? How many days would have they waited, him and Alyx and Kleiner and everyone else, without hearing word from Barney? How many days did he normally go in silence? How many days until they would start to worry and how many until they’d all but _know_? Never getting any confirmation, never finding a body to bury, a body with a bullet that Gordon had _put there_ -

If there’s tears, then Barney will be the only one to know anyway.

He pulls back for breath again, dizzy maybe from the lack of it or maybe from the grief and anxiety and relief rushing through him all at once, and then he tilts his head to lean in again, idly noting that Barney’s still shaking, knowing that he’s probably not much better off, when he hears something. He jolts back to listen, and from the way Barney lets him go and twists his head to focus on the sounds better, he’s heard it too.

Distorted voices spitting military gibberish from outside. Still a little ways away, but not nearly far enough that they wouldn’t be found.

Gordon is shoved back gently.

“ _Go_ ,” Barney whispers at him forcefully, but he’s still staring to the side like looking at nothing in particular could help him hear better. Then his eyes trail towards the large open doors of the warehouse.

Gordon grabs his gun, and when he turns, Barney is already making his way towards the door, his footsteps nearly silent, sticking close to the wall. What the fuck is he doing?

He whips around with wild eyes when Gordon grabs his wrist and pulls him back.

“What are you-” he tugs, not putting much effort into getting out of Gordon’s hold yet, and with a gun in one hand and Barney in the other, Gordon can’t exactly talk back to him. “Gordon, you gotta _go_.”

Yeah, no shit.

He tugs on Barney’s arm and nods towards the other entrance of the warehouse, some service door that’s long lost even its frame. He hopes the face he’s making conveys a good enough message of _this way, dumbass_. But fondly.

...okay, so, apparently it _doesn’t_ , judging from the look Barney is giving him, and then he tries to tug his wrist out of Gordon’s hold again, so Gordon sighs a little, holsters his pistol, and lets go.

“My boat is that way,” he motions to the door Barney very much _hadn’t_ been heading towards. “We don’t have time for this, come on.”

“Yeah, _exactly_.”

“What?”

Barney gestures towards the door that does _not_ lead to a nice hoverboat. He seems upset, even if Gordon can tell that he’s trying really hard to hide it. “There’s a whole _squad_ of CPs coming. Maybe worse,” when Gordon still doesn’t seem to get it, he grimaces. It looks painful. “I’ll distract them for as long as I can, give you a headstart, but I can’t promise much, so stop fucking _wasting_ it.”

Okay. Okay, Gordon sees how it is.

Sees it and gets it and _isn’t fucking letting it happen_. The Mudskipper isn’t invincible but it _is_ fast, and there’s a tunnel not far ahead that’ll make for nice cover, and Gordon has been through worse. Much worse. They’ll figure it out like he always has, like _they_ always had back in the day when their biggest concerns were getting away with climbing around in the vents and falling through the ceiling sometimes.

No one needs to die today for Gordon to get away in one piece. _Especially_ not Barney.

He makes another move to grab Barney’s hand, but he steps back. “What is your _problem_?”

Okay, that stings a little bit.

“I’m not letting my best friend become fucking fascist bait!”

Barney’s words get lost somewhere halfway to being spoken, but the sounds of Combine chatter are closer now, and Gordon isn’t waiting around to see what else he wants to argue about. Instead he reaches out again, does manage to grab his hand this time, and apparently he’s either shocked him enough or actually convinced him, because he lets himself be pulled along and out of the warehouse.

The Mudskipper, now with twice the passengers, takes off before the Combine could even guess where to shoot.

  
  


The next time they get to stop, it’s somewhere midway through a pipe. Not the first one they drove into. Not even the second. But it doesn’t sound like they’re being pursued anymore even with how the pipe and the water at the bottom amplify every sound, and they’d just found a branch that had led to an old collapse and the familiar sigil of a Lambda spray painted on the wall, so they decide that it’s as good a place as any to allow themselves a moment to rest.

Gordon roots through the single crate of ammo and half-used medkits and tries to remember what bullet goes into what gun.

“You don’t need those,” Barney gently pries one of the boxes out of his hand that he’d mostly just been rattling around (because it makes a good noise!) and trying to read the cyrillic on. Does he still know some Russian from his college years? Yes, actually! Does he understand bullet things even in English? Absolutely fucking not! “These go in your pistol, though.”

Gordon gratefully takes the box being handed to him and starts stuffing its contents into one of the bags he’d strapped onto his thigh. Bags he’d also scavenged somewhere, like the ammo. Kleiner and Alyx had made him a wonderful HEV suit, but they _have_ kinda neglected giving him pockets.

(He wonders if the whole thing about women’s jeans never having proper pockets is still relevant in the apocalypse.)

“Maybe I should’ve taken you up on that offer to bring me to the shooting range, huh?” he signs instead, trying to make some sort of joke, though this one stings. Black Mesa and those days are far behind them now. Twenty years is a lot of distance.

“Your hindsight is sharp as ever, Doc,” Barney grunts as he abandons the crate and instead slides down to sit with his back against it, but it has no bite to it. It’s fond. Reminiscent of those good old times in a way that makes Gordon want to forget all that much more just how long it’s been for Barney.

Gordon is halfway through instead contemplating what the fuck is up with all the green fluid in the medkits these days and why they make him think of ramen flavour packets when Barney accidentally elbows him in the knee and he looks over.

Just in time to see Barney unbuckling the front of his coat, and the question of _what are you doing_ is immediately replaced by:

“Is your coat a fucking _crop top_?”

Barney blinks at him for a moment, and Gordon is about to fingerspell the important part for him again when he frowns. “If you said what I think you just said then no and also fuck you.”

Gordon grins. “It _is_ a crop top.”

“It’s fucking annoying is what it is, shut up.”

But Gordon is right and Barney is just too stubborn to admit it. His padded, moderately bulletproof coat is very much crop top sized over another, thinner coat underneath with the unnecessary two belts, and there’s so much to gawk and laugh at that Gordon barely knows where to start. Put a pause on the fascists hunting them and the overall apocalypse and the zombies for a moment, the cops that have been trying to hunt him down all this time have done so wearing bulletproof crop tops. He needs a moment. Holy shit.

“Why are you taking off your-”

“If you call my coat a crop top one more time I’m going to strangle you.”

He’s so comically angry about it and all while struggling to wrangle the damn thing off of himself (all the padded layers don’t appear to be helping, and are those _wires_?) and Gordon is so absolutely delighted by all of this. It makes him want to kiss Barney again and he has no time to reflect upon that.

“Okay, but why?” he asks again, this time omitting any teasing (for now), and then reaches over to help yank one of the sleeves free.

“These things got all sorts of gadgets in them. Trackers, radio, some crude little vital signs monitor, who knows what else,” he pulls one of his arms free and then comes the part of swinging the coat off his back without strangling himself with, yeah, those are definitely wires. “Don’t want those working if we’re going under the radar.”

“I’m sure Alyx would love to get her hands on some scraps of them.”

“Oh yeah, I’m planning on bringing her whatever we can salvage, don’t you worry,” he finally pulls the coat off the rest of the way, and none of the wires actually seem to run under his second coat, they’re just loose and tangled as _fuck_. “I’m not the Fun Uncle for nothing.”

Fun Uncle Status and intended gifts for Alyx be damned, the destruction of the gadgets is pretty absolute. They cannot take any chances, and the heavy HEV boots sure do a good job of stomping out whatever functionality the gadgets still had in them after they’d ripped out their wires.

The radio, sadly, has to go, but they’d both rather not be tracked than keep getting intel. Most of the chatter sent out to simple CPs right now is just yelling about killing Gordon anyway, so they’re not missing much, that’s what they try to comfort themselves with.

The actual trackers are harder to get rid of, because they’re sewn into their own little packets, but not by much. All of Gordon’s theories of how expandable the Combine consider their most basic officers are being confirmed both by the coat and Barney’s sparse words.

The thing that gives the death signal is, turns out, nothing but a simple heartbeat counter on the wrist, and also the culprit of the wire Barney had almost strangled himself with. That one kind of amuses Gordon, not the strangling part, but the fact that the Combine just have shitty smart watches to help keep track of their population. It stays funny as long as he doesn’t think about how many of them he’s made go off already.

At least cutting the wire _before_ pulling it off Barney’s wrist keeps it from sending out its own signal.

“Alright, anything else?” Gordon asks after he’s done looking at the coat inside and out a few times. He is _learning_ , about things other than horrible fashion this time.

Barney looks himself over as if to take inventory, and thus so does Gordon, and-

He curses his fucking clutter blindness, or _whatever detail_ blindness, working in overtime. Somehow making him forget about a _bloodstain_. On _Barney’s side_. No longer hidden even in part by his stupid crop top overcoat. The bloodstain he had not at all thought about since noting it once, before he even knew it was _Barney_.

Barney is already talking about something else that Gordon’s brain is refusing to hear, and he waves a hand to stop him and make him look at what he’s saying instead.

“Are you okay?”

He gestures to his side for clarification, because if he didn’t then Barney would just say some random funny bullshit to avoid the question. The supremely _stupid_ question, because there’s _blood_ , so obviously he’s _not okay_ , but Gordon’s gotta start _somewhere_.

Barney looks down as if he needs to check, and he pulls the torn fabric aside a little bit to get a better look, and fuck, Gordon can see blood and skin that is _not good_.

“Oh, that’s just a scratch. Don’t worry about it.”

Good thing then that Gordon has always been real shit at following instructions, because he’s fucking _worrying_ about it. He’s already on his knees next to Barney again, stupid crop top coat abandoned, and what it is with today anyway, this same arrangement as back at the stupid warehouse – oh god, the _warehouse_ -

Barney is pushing his hands away gently, and fair point, Gordon shouldn’t be touching a fresh wound with those, what was he _thinking_.

“It’s fine, darlin’, a bullet grazed me back when we met up,” he squeezes one of Gordon’s hands in his and doesn’t let go because Gordon doesn’t. “I’ve had much worse, I’ll live.”

He says that like it’s supposed to be _reassuring_.

The only thing keeping his mind from running wild wondering just how much worse Barney has had before is that he’s already busy panicking about something else. He rears up onto his knees and starts digging around for one of those medkits again, mind racing as if he could ever expect himself to remember every bullet he’d shot in every firefight, how many of them had hit the target and what that target _was_ -

All he’s got for his efforts yet is a half-unrolled thing of bandage when Barney finally catches his arm and pulls him back down.

“Gordon, stop that. Come on,” he’s pulling out that comforting kinda voice again, the one Gordon hasn’t heard in what feels like _lifetimes_ , and then he seems to realise that keeping his hand on the metal plating of the HEV suit’s arm means that Gordon can’t _feel_ it, and so he moves it instead to the back of his neck and holds him steady and Gordon almost _sobs_. “It doesn’t matter whose bullet it was, okay? Everyone was shooting around wildly, and you didn’t _know_. Could’ve been _anyone_. It happens.”

It shouldn’t happen though, Gordon wants to say, but he can’t. It’s awfully selfish and wrong in a war, in a world where fascist cops torture civilians and science exists only tucked away in shadowed corners, but it shouldn’t happen. Not to anyone. Not to his best friend.

He can’t let himself think about what could’ve happened if that bullet had hit closer to its mark, and then he does anyway, a little bit, and then Barney is squeezing the back of his neck and talking to him again like he’s all too used to the possibility of giving his life to a stray bullet. But despite that, he’s still alive, that’s what Gordon tells himself to calm down already, get a fucking grip, Barney is alive and right in front of him and giving him a patient little smile that feels so much _smaller_ than what Gordon is used to from him, but he’ll take it.

He’s here, and he’s alive, not buried under miles of rubble in Black Mesa, not left behind in that warehouse, not anywhere else, and if there weren’t more urgent things to do then Gordon thinks he’d kiss him again. He chalks it up to too many emotions and not a single proper outlet for them.

“If you let me bandage it I won’t call your coat a crop top again,” he signs weakly instead. The roll of bandage almost goes tumbling off his lap.

Barney lets go of him at that, apparently reassured enough. “You drive a hard bargain.”

But he says it in a way that translates to a fond _yes, but I am still drawing it out._

  
  


Once Barney’s side is bandaged properly and his undercoat is fastened back up, including the two belts that Gordon still doesn’t _get_ , he looks over himself with a sigh. Almost as if his outfit is more of a concern to him than the fact that he got grazed by a bullet that may have-

Okay. No. Not thinking about it.

The tear in the side of his coat had ripped further in the process, and he’d muttered something about giving away his sewing kit that Gordon didn’t quite catch in the moment. Now he’s inspecting it, pulling at it until he accidentally rips is further and he swears, startling a small laugh out of Gordon.

“We might as well make it look like I stole this thing, huh?”

Which, to be fair, had not occurred to Gordon at all, but he’s not going to mention it. He hasn’t exactly had to think much about disguises ever since he made a habit of walking into mortal danger. Kind of hard when you’re dressed like a scrapyard in orange.

“Yeah,” he agrees anyway. “Probably better if they don’t know they had a spy in their ranks.”

Barney gives a bitter little laugh at that, the one Gordon has always hated, as much as he could hate anything about Barney. “Yeah, won’t be missing it, that’s for sure. Shame, though,” he finally leaves the tear on his side be. “At least I was useful for once.”

He doesn’t give Gordon time to say anything or to even just _process_ that before he switches topics again (he always used to do this, _every fucking time_ , Gordon would have to stick his foot in the door and shut him up if he wanted to comfort him, which he also did, _every time_ ) and yanking off his gloves.

“These things though, good riddance,” he throws them behind himself, aiming for the supply crate, and then huffs something that’s almost a laugh when they go way too far and land on the pavement on the other side of it.

“What’d those gloves ever do to hurt you?” Gordon asks, instead of the more topical but much less fun question of _why are you getting rid of something that is technically armour._

(Or how much he’d like to follow his example actually. He has feelings about bulky gloves and so do his joints and his skin and none of them are flattering.)

He also doesn’t ask about the scars. Criss-crossing over Barney’s knuckles and a long one with stitch marks over the back of his left hand, and over his wrist what look like...chemical burns? He doesn’t ask about them now, because it’d be rude. Too much. Too pushy.

He knows he will ask later anyway.

“Listen, you remember what you always said about the rubber gloves?” Barney says like Gordon could ever _forget_. He hated those damn things, even if differently than how he dislikes the HEV gloves now, but still hated them. Refused to wear them a second longer than he had to for lab safety reasons. “Similar deal with these ones. Sensory hell, you just feel all those seams on the inside and _nothing else_ ,” he rubs at some red marks on the sides of his fingers. “Had to wear them every day, too.”

That’s fair. Gordon doesn’t argue. Even if he’d rather Barney had every bit of protection he can get and he feels like he could make good use of wearing gloves wherever they’re going, if all the zombies and toxic sludge are any indication. Because goddamn, yeah, he _gets it_.

Plus, he reminds himself, Barney won’t be coming along for much longer anyway. As soon as they reach the next outpost with Resistance members in it, it’s goodbye. Gordon isn’t dragging him along into whatever hell he’s headed for. And if Barney wants to make it to Black Mesa East too for whatever reason, it’s better if they aren’t going together, as much as the thought of leaving him again aches.

Gordon carries enough of a target on his back for two people, and Barney isn’t covered in metal.

Barney’s pistol comes along for the trip. His big gun, which Gordon learns is called an MP7 and then promptly forgets just as fast, because why are all these things named letter-number nonsense, got left behind somewhere in that warehouse. Neither of them thought to grab it until they were out of there. They haven’t come close enough to any taken down Combine or any of their supplies to lift Barney a new one.

As for melee, Barney frees his baton from his belt (the baton which Gordon had spent a while referring to as Evil Electric Stick before finally remembering the word for it) and sure, it’s not a crowbar, those seldom come with batteries and all that, but Gordon can still imagine how much damage it could deal.

Barney looks like he's contemplating throwing it into the canal and never fishing it back out.

Gordon knocks on his own thigh to get his attention. It works better than trying to clap or snap in the gloves. “What are you doing with that?”

He means for it to be a casual, general question, but the look Barney gives him is less than reassuring. He takes a while to speak like he’s trying to figure out how to. What to lie about.

“Thinking about leaving it here,” he nods towards the supply crate still behind him. “Maybe someone could make good use of it.”

“Like you.”

Barney shakes his head slowly, and his smile is humourless. Feels so entirely unlike him. “I wouldn’t use it anyway.”

“Why?” if he signs a little too harshly, he’ll chalk it up to stress. “You can’t just go back out there with only a pistol-”

“I said I wouldn’t use it, alright? I’d rather get into a fistfight with the CPs if I gotta,” he gives the baton another disgusted look that has Gordon wondering why he doesn’t just put it down already. He also feels like he knows the answer. “I hate this fucking thing.”

“More than the gloves?”

His flimsy attempt at lightening the conversation a little bit falls short. He never really did know what to do with Barney when he was upset but before he’d accept comfort, besides let him talk himself out.

“At least the gloves have less blood on them.”

Oh.

He doesn’t know much yet about what Barney had done to survive in the past twenty years. What everyone else had done. They didn’t get a lot of time to talk before Gordon had left Kleiner's lab, and running from cops on a lightweight but noisy hoverboat isn’t exactly conductive of conversation either.

But he knows Barney didn’t become a CP for fun. He knows he’s a spy, and, well.

A spy has to play the part.

He gently pries the baton from his hand and only wobbles a little stupidly when he pushes himself up onto his knees and drops it into the supply crate. He doesn’t have the words to describe the look Barney gives him when he looks at him again, something pained and guilty and relieved, but he thinks it breaks his heart a little bit.

So he sits back down and pulls him into a hug.

Which, in hindsight? Maybe not the smartest idea. Not PhD certified. He’s got a big bulky chestplate and a bunch of metal on his arms and all around he’s become much, _much_ worse for being hugged. Before this he just used to be very bony, something Barney had complained about many, many times and never once seemed to actually mind.

But he doesn’t seem to mind this either. After just a moment he turns his head so that his face isn't smooshed into dirty metal, and his arms come up around Gordon’s torso, and oh, Gordon is so grateful that around there the suit is mostly padding and kevlar instead of metal plating, because when Barney squeezes and holds on tighter than Gordon would ever have the heart to mention, he can actually _feel_ it.

He’s always felt like he’s paying for the HEV suit’s protection against danger by losing feeling of everything else along with it, but apparently hugs still kind of work. Enough to feel the pressure at least. He can definitely be grateful for that.

He knows it’s not his place to judge and forgive how much blood Barney has on his hands. He knows it’s not even his place to _know_ , not now. He knows it won’t be for a while either, not until long after he’s left Barney somewhere safe and completed whatever grand plan is laid out for him this time and maybe finally won the world a moment to rest.

But for now it can be his place to hold him, and he can pretend it’s enough.

  
  


(Barney is silent as they hold onto each other. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t even talk.

Gordon feels like Barney maybe hasn’t cried in years.

But they sit there for a while, silent. Listening for danger. Not letting go until they have to.

Eventually, they move on.)

  
  


Barney laughs, a surprised, short thing as Gordon takes a corner with way too much speed and they swerve and then keep going like nothing happened.

“I should’ve bullied you harder into letting me teach you how to drive!”

Gordon can barely hear him, definitely can’t sign back, but oh, he’d _love_ to. He never learned how to drive back when he could’ve, and now Barney’s been trying to give him pointers, and apparently he’s doing a shit job and enjoying the hell out of it. He can barely straighten their course before they hit the next turn, his glasses are splattered with water and his hair is sticking to the back of his neck where it had been inexplicably cut short when he’d woken up. But something about the speed, the shots popping and hitting the water off mark behind them, Barney’s occasional laughter, it’s making him feel like, despite all logic and experience, the Combine could never catch them.

“Gordon, if you’re doing what I think you’re-”

It’s so incredibly unfair that Gordon can’t quip back because he’s _driving_. It’s one of the things he doesn’t like about this boat. You know, besides getting shot at.

Okay, so he may end up catching the ramp he’d been going for at a less-than-ideal angle. They may almost flip over, but only almost. Barney may yell and his stupid crop top coat may be soaked now and it all in all may not have been the wisest decision all things considered.

But Gordon is laughing anyway as they continue speeding along, and the way Barney reaches forward in a straight, safer stretch of the canal to shove gently at his head, bare fingers threading through damp hair-

“What did I tell you, you’re going to be the death of me, what are you using that PhD of yours for anyway…!”

Yeah, that makes it all worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> You know, I pitched the idea of "what if Barney was amongst the CPs sent after Gordon" and the setup for the first scene, and then Dima went "and then they kiss >:) for Communication Reasons" and I was fuckin powerless to stop them
> 
> If there's stuff in this that feels like it should be followed up on (*cough*Barney's chemical burns*cough*) it's because there is! This is a whole AU with a storyline and everything. Now how much I and/or Dima will manage to write and publish from it is, uhh. Another question. I do have more ideas to put on paper tho
> 
> [Also here's Dima's tumblr if you're reading this on the day of posting and wanna wish them a happy birthday >:)](https://22ratonthestreet.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [my main tumblr](pristine-starlight.tumblr.com/) | [my art tumblr](crowned-ladybug.tumblr.com/)


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